Introduction to Artistic Intelligence

Stanford University offered in the fall 2011 -Introduction to AI (Artificial Intelligence) with identical coursework to its traditional physical classroom for free to all via the internet. Over 160,000 have signed up for the class.. This is enough people to form a real “culture” in both the cultural and petri dish senses of the word. This was a unique moment and rare opportunity to observe and participate in the evolution of internet culture as well.

Introduction to Artistic Intelligence was a parallel course that was also be freely available to the public. This course functioned both as real educational introduction to the tools and techniques used today in contemporary art and as a collaborative art project in its own right. Over 800 students from 6 continents sign up and it had 120,ooo unique views during the projects duration.

That artificial and artistic share the same word root is not accidental. The common Latin root is ars which encompasses our modern words for art, craft and skill. Both AI and the Arts are multidisciplinary fields that interested in perception, social organization, relationships between humans and objects, as well as the nature of intelligence itself. Likewise both AI and the arts have fluid borders between works of pure investigation and those with broad popular application. In diverse yet often parallel ways both artificial and artistic intelligence will profoundly shape the future of our society